EmbraerX and Airservices release Concept of Operations for Urban Air Mobility in Australia

EmbraerX and Australia’s civ­il air nav­i­ga­tion ser­vice provider, Airser­vices, have devel­oped a new Con­cept of Oper­a­tions (CONOPS) to help accel­er­ate the growth of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty in the coun­try.

This CONOPS will explore new and prac­ti­cal con­cepts to safe­ly facil­i­tate the intro­duc­tion of the air taxi indus­try. Using the city of Mel­bourne as a mod­el, it will exam­ine how exist­ing air traf­fic man­age­ment solu­tions can ini­tial­ly enable Urban Air Mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly prepar­ing for scale of oper­a­tions through new traf­fic man­age­ment tech­nolo­gies.

Eve Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Solu­tions, Embrar­erX’s newest spin-off, will be respon­si­ble for the part­ner­ship with Airser­vices, and for the devel­op­ment of Urban Air Traf­fic Man­age­ment solu­tions.

Daniel Moczyd­low­er, Pres­i­dent & CEO of EmbraerX, said: “The cre­ation of the UAM ecosys­tem requires inno­v­a­tive solu­tions, which is also a fun­da­men­tal pil­lar of Embraer´s growth strat­e­gy for the com­ing years, and EmbraerX was built to address these needs.

“Through this part­ner­ship, we are joint­ly embark­ing on the first steps toward Aus­tralia becom­ing one of the world’s first Urban Air Mobil­i­ty mar­kets.”

Airser­vices Aus­tralia (Airser­vices) is a gov­ern­ment-owned organ­i­sa­tion pro­vid­ing safe, secure, effi­cient and envi­ron­men­tal­ly-respon­si­ble ser­vices to the avi­a­tion indus­try. It safe­ly man­ages 11 per cent of the world’s air­space where there are more than four mil­lion air­craft move­ments car­ry­ing over 156 mil­lion pas­sen­gers annu­al­ly.

The CONOPS will also lever­age Airser­vices’ sophis­ti­cat­ed sim­u­la­tion tech­nol­o­gy to demon­strate how air taxis could be inte­grat­ed with exist­ing air­space users in the high­ly com­plex Mel­bourne air­space. This lev­el of sim­u­la­tion pro­vides a sci­en­tif­ic basis to the CONOPS.

Peter Cur­ran, Chief Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence and Strat­e­gy Offi­cer at Airser­vices, added: “This excit­ing ini­tia­tive com­bines Airser­vices’ expe­ri­ence as the nation­al air­space man­ag­er with the tech­ni­cal inno­va­tion of Embraer.

“We have the respon­si­bil­i­ty of keep­ing our skies safe, and we are excit­ed to lever­age our sig­nif­i­cant exper­tise and oper­a­tional capa­bil­i­ties in air­space man­age­ment and part­ner with a glob­al avi­a­tion expert to devel­op inno­v­a­tive solu­tions that ensure safe and equi­table access to the urban air­space for a broad spec­trum of air­craft, includ­ing con­ven­tion­al heli­copters, fixed-wing air­craft, and eVTOL air­craft.”

Thanks to strong gov­ern­ment sup­port and a world-lead­ing avi­a­tion record, Aus­tralia is already start­ing to ben­e­fit from indus­try inter­est and invest­ment.

Mel­bourne is one of three cities which will launch Uber Ele­vate’s aer­i­al ride-shar­ing net­work in 2023, and last week, eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er AMSL Aero unveiled its Ver­ti­ia mod­el in Syd­ney, which will be launched as an air ambu­lance with aeromed­ical char­i­ty Care­Flight.

David Rot­tblatt, Project Leader for EmbraerX’s Urban Air Traf­fic Man­age­ment and appoint­ed to be the future Vice Pres­i­dent of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment for Eve, added: “This CONOPS pro­pos­es a safe method for allow­ing the UAM indus­try in Aus­tralia to scale.

“Fol­low­ing this first crit­i­cal step, we will start gath­er­ing feed­back from indus­try stake­hold­ers and the com­mu­ni­ty to fur­ther inform how we can co-cre­ate this excit­ing future.”

You can read the CONOPS in its entire­ty by vis­it­ing https://embraerx.embraer.com/global/en/uatm. Addi­tion­al­ly, you have the option to review the CONOPS and pro­vide your feed­back here.